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Thread: Stopping Spam

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    Ah, Mrs. Peel! mike_w's Avatar
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    Stopping Spam

    For forms on a webpage, what do you reckon is the best way to prevent spam?

    I've considered implementing a visual CAPTCHA. However, this does not bode well for accessibility - it tends to discriminate against those with visual impairments, or those that might otherwise have difficulties with the image.

    A simple Maths question could work, such as just adding two random small numbers together, but this again could pose problems to a small minority of users. Also, are there any spambots that can get around this? I would imagine it is not too difficult to program your way past such an obstacle.

    Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

    Mike.
    "Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."

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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    I've seen plug ins on the visual test that read the letters out.

    I did also do some research on how those spam bots work , many of them claim to be able to pass those turing type tests.

    the spammers we get on hexus are often real people who are actually paid to sign up and spam.
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    there are ways to pretty much stop high figurs like %80 of spam on web forms straight away - but however that depends on your expected usage of the form.

    for example - is this form for say UK only use, if not blacklisting ISP's from the known spam regions is an easy one.

    Other easy tasks are to put a drop down box for the country in to the web form and there are modules that check your ISP matches the country you've put in (and thats not done by .co.uk or .com for example) so putting USA as a county then a reverse lookup shows an indian IP range = no go. Thats not without risk and effort though.

    Can you share a little more info on the fom and its intended market.
    It is Inevitable.....


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    Ah, Mrs. Peel! mike_w's Avatar
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    Unfortunately, the form is used by just about anyone - it's for adding comments onto a webpage.
    "Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    you could still apply a country reverse lookup check (if you have access to modify the form) enter the country you are from to post from a drop down then do a reverse lookup on the ip range.

    It will beat most of the bots.
    It is Inevitable.....


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